Roman Capriccio, The Colosseum and Other Monuments

Nowhere in Rome can you stand where Panini has placed us. The Colosseum, the three towering Corinthian columns on the right, and the little pyramid poking up in the middle distance are all real monuments, but they sit far apart in the actual city. Panini gathered them into one imaginary view, a type of painting the Italians called a capriccio, from the word for a whim or caprice. Think of it as a greatest hits arrangement, assembled for the pleasure of seeing everything at once.

Panini worked in Rome in the 1700s, when wealthy young Europeans on the Grand Tour wanted paintings to carry home as proof of where they had been. He was trained in stage design and taught perspective at the French Academy in Rome, which explains how confidently he stacks arches and columns into deep space. The small figures scattered across the foreground are worth finding: men lounging on broken blocks, a group chatting in the shade of the columns, and two famous ancient sculptures set up on plinths, including a fighting warrior with his arm raised. They are not really doing much, which is part of the appeal. The ruins have become a place to sit and pass the afternoon.